Monte Carlo

^ Many medieval physicians maintained, well into the 15th Century, that washing weakened the skin and made a person more vulnerable to disease.

With regards to over-size weapons: I was at a museum last year where there were lots of medieval-era weapons on display. They all look rather small... axes, warhammers, poleaxes (by the 1400s English ones were steel-hafted hammers with a long thin spike on the opposite side) and even broadswords. Of course, in the realworld, common cannon-fodder grade medieval people were rather small because of poor nutrition and had a life-span of about forty-odd. Although thousands of Englishmen could still achieve the 120-odd lb pull of a longbow. Go figure. Conversely, I once visited a German castle full of comedy-sized zweihanders and polearms that I am assured were genuine. Cheers MC

^ That shot reminds me of a club I went to in Cyprus a few years back. All it needs is a guy with a drink with an umbrella in. Cheers MC

Right I'm off, up a mountain with no internet access for a bit. Will see y'all later and see how the best fantasy game / setting EVAR is getting on. Should be back by the end of the month. Cheers MC

^ Only as a codename during the TOP SECRET development cycle.

^ Vol's rant is the strategy, the shop staff simply deliver it tactically. As for my views on DLC - they remain unchanged. I'll happily pay full price for a proper XP, what I don't like is the idea of a balkanised game where you pay five pounds here and ten pounds there for piecemeal content. I read the link on your Wiki to a Biowarian discussing the DLC plan for the next two years and thought: (a) Two years? Cool, well done Bio. BUT (b) Shame you've chosen to deliver it via this method. I'm not bitching - I remember when Tales of the Sword Coast was being developed in tandem with BG1, the intention being to deliver it as an XP. That's great, TotSC was a chunky, good quality XP and worth every penny - it wasn't like BG1 wasn't big enough as it was. Yet people still moaned that it was cynical that it was being developed so aerly and not included in BG! I'm certainly not one of those! The DA approach looks different and strangely diffused. OTOH, the Bethseda FO3 strategy looks acceptable to me - it's modular. I'm wondering if Bio's experience with NWN might have informed this decision (let's face it, it must have done). After all, I remember reading grandoise plans for that, the mods released to buy were pretty grim - were they the best way to focus the development effort that went into them? I know that Bio have put a lot of effort to get the top mod-makers on board early with this (e.g. Adam Miller and so on) which is a great idea and for me shows much promise. I'm really excited about the longevity of DA not because of official content - I want to see the sort of effort that went into the NWN1 modding community turn this into something really substantial that we'll all be playing for years. That's one of the reasons why I'm so interested in DA, despite my reservations and criticism of so many other elements. Cheers MC

Dude, a career in retail middle-management beckons.

No elves, dwarves, hobbits... nada. I'm thinking that the player character has grown up in a fortified border monastery that provides protection to local settlers, who are by and large smallholders and subsistence farmers. They have an uneasy relationship with local tribal peoples who Got There First. However, the bitter wars fought between tribals and settlers are over, only the occasional skirmish by hot-heads on either side breaks the peace and this is usually resolved by negotiation between the monastery and the tribal council. The monastery is run by a faintly druidical order who believe that their destiny is to bring some semblance of harmony to the furthest reaches of human existence - that is to say they've deliberately eschewed civilization. Nobody in the monsatery has been East, back to civilization, in near living memory and only the occasional merchant or visiting church elder brings news of the wider world. Depending on your POV, the monastic settlers are either wack-job survivalists or rugged individualists carving a new life. The player only knows what he or she has been taught by the monks. The main external threat are The Beastmen. These primitive humanoids live in the primal forest to the West of the monastery, and have been the enemy of the tribals since antiquity. The tribals fear and respect the Beastmen, and are expert hunters of their kind. The settlers have tried to parley with them, but they do not seem to listen to reason. One legend is that once in a generation a Beastman is born who can take human form, pose as a human and go beserk in their village, slaying everyone and drinking their blood before scurrying back into the woods. Everybody is, in fact, utterly sh*t-scared of the Beastmen and our game begins as the military monks are planning the bi-annual war party into the woods to thin out their population. The monks do not fight fair, they use technology (the monks have ancient weapons not unlike flame throwers), sorcery, trained fighting animals and levies from the tribes to do the dirty work (who are well paid in alcohol and tobacco, which has become a form of currency). The player might be a trainee fighting monk, an adept, a tribal hunter or scout, or a monastic technologist (a frontier armourer / mechanic). The war party returns, having killed a number of beastmen and only sustaining light casualties thanks to superior technology and luck. A feast is held and the senior clerics take the opportunity to invite the tribal elders to join the celebrations. This is held in the Moothall inside the fortified monastery. After a feast and drinking stories are told. However, this is interrupted by the appearance of a giant warrior with jet-black skin and strange orange eyes, wearing armour and weapons never seen before. The tribals are awed, as the man (who is quite friendly and introduces himself as Jhun) closely resembles a character from their folklore, a portent of terrible events to come. Indeed, Jhun implores the humans to flee as the Beastmen are on the march and he has revealed himself to save lives... What happens next? (Memes - The Village, Fallout, The 13th Warrior, Celtic mythos, Beowulf, RuneQuest, Pilgrim Fathers, The Warrior in Jet-and-Gold / Corum / Hawkmoon)

I really like the idea of a few base classes customise via skill trees. 3.5E D&D was starting to get silly with all the prestige classes. I just don't know how it will work in DA - can I make a warrior with some rogue-ish twist of a magically-gifted rogue? In any case, this is one of the design decisions I think was extremely good and flew in the face of expectations in a good way. Cheers MC

^ No but it has a fully dynamic and meaningful influence system, like the one Sawyer described for TBH (the first time round). That way you might or might not see NPCs develop in the way you might choose.

^ For 'bitterness' I presume you mean a lack of slavish fanboy adoration for Bioware? Mate, go and check out RPG Codex then come back, sit round the fire and play the guitar with us.

It should have been called Game / Setting. My mistake, now rectified.

^ I want to play Baldur's Gate but I can't get BGTuTu to work So I'm playing BG2, Medieval TW2 and a helluva lot of NWN2 instead.

Clearly, my 'Let's Make the Worst Fantasy Setting EVAR' thread was an enormous success and attracted the cream of the forum to contribute. I am still crafting a campaign setting from the wealth of raw material, I shall make it available by the totally non-negotiable October release date. Now it's time to create the Best Fantasy Setting Ever. Seriously. Please post a precis of what its about and what the setting is like, who the player characters would be and maybe who the bad guys are (if, indeed, you choose to have bad guys in the normal meaning of the word). You can be completely revolutionary or cleverly traditional - classic tailoring with a sartorial twist. But it should be compelling, playable and fun. Post ideas for game mechanics, classes, deities, anything. Ladies and Gentlemen, the floor is yours. Cheers MC

Looked at the screenies on the German 'focus-on-making-expressionless-elf-chick-characters' DA article. I rather like the character sheet, I even like streamlined skill trees. But even the character sheet has freaking blood spattering on it. I'm calling my character Dexter, for chirssakes.

Jaheria's fate in about 75% of my games, unless I need a moody druid with crap stats.

^ I remember the bucket! Nostalgia ain't what it used to be - the BIS boards were groovy but also a haven of relentless spamming and O/T dross. And I thought my postcount there was in the low 2000's...

Hey Germans are gamers too. And there's lots of them. Is it just me or are the elves a bit too 'Humans with pointy ears' a la Spock? I really liked the NWN / NWN2 art direction whereby you could make some really freaky non-human looking elves.

It's such a small yet completely important thing.... I hate the font they've used for the text in this game.

So far we have the following DLC announced - * A new NPC with associated quests. $15 for an NPC? Hahahahaha. On a a game where you get the toolset? Double hahahahahahaha. * A new mini-expansion (The Keep) * Magic items, including the stat / exp boost Put them all together and I suppose you've enough material for a very small expansion yet the net cost for all of the above is almost the same as a full one. I call greed on this one, they are going for a two tier revenue stream model. I'd rather see all the above, plus some new quests bundled into the XP at a normal XP price. Maybe someone can explain the MMO style buying-loot system they are implementing here, even I can see why the Bioboard regulars are hacked off. Bio are the Starbucks of the computer gaming, they really are. That's $5 dollars for a muffin, six if you want choc chips, seven if you want us to light a scented candle while you eat it! Cheers MC

Hello GM, I faintly remember you. I was on the BIS boards from 2000-2004. I'm nice as long as you agree with virutally everything I say. Although the forums haven't been the same since Karzak The Friendly Half-Orc retired. Cheerio, MC

^ Checked it out again, my bad I got confused with the FO3 article I read - he did the father's voice at the prologue of FO3. I am a complete dunce, forgive me

No kidding? He has a fantastic speaking voice when he drops the Transatlantic drawl he's picked up, resonant and rich. Planescape navel gazing = meh.

Mentioned it in the other DA:O thread but King of Dragon Pass (1999) is a very odd but completely charming little game. I suspect many of you here would enjoy it, check it out. Cheers MC

^ Never solo'd BG1 or BG2, but completed both (vanilla, mind you, no mods) with only a PC Ftr/Thf and Imoen in my party. Never did that with ToB. In BG1 missile weapons were sick. Completely broken. Not that I minded, as I usually took Coran along (Broken DEX, broken weapon profs in longbow), he was basically a machinegun. Cheers MC